Sara Yael Hirschhorn

Dr. Sara Yael Hirschhorn is a member of the teaching faculty of the Shalom Hartman Institute of North America as well as its Chicago Scholars Circle. She joined the faculty of Northwestern University in fall 2018 as the Visiting Assistant Professor in Israel Studies at the Crown Family Center for Jewish and Israel Studies, where her research, teaching, and public engagement activities focus on Diaspora-Israel relations, the Arab-Israeli conflict, and the Israel ultra-nationalist movement.

Sara is a graduate of Yale University (B.A.) and the University of Chicago (M.A., Ph.D.) and the recipient of numerous grants and fellowships.

Her first book, City on a Hilltop: American Jews and the Israeli Settler Movement (Harvard, 2017) was the winner of the 2018 Sami Rohr Prize in Jewish Literature Choice Award and a finalist for the 2017 National Jewish Book Award.

She is currently working on a new book manuscript, tentatively entitled “From Jackson to Johannesburg to Jerusalem: How the 1967 War Transformed Diaspora Zionists Into White People,” which is a transnational history of the Diaspora Zionism since the Six Day War, alongside other articles and projects.

Prior to her appointment at Northwestern, Sara was the University Research Lecturer and Sidney Brichto Fellow in Israel Studies at the University of Oxford (2013-2018) and a postdoctoral fellow in Israel Studies at Brandeis University (2012-2013).

Apart from her academic work, Sara is also a frequent public speaker, writer, media commentator, and policy consultant on Israel/Jewish Affairs.